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Wordplay on the Bill of Rights

I personally do not know WHY the Citizens of the USA have this big deal

over believing they have a “Bill of Rights”. You have a Constitution. Yes. You have Amendments to that Constitution. Yes. Obviously, the Constitution was not fair enough or understood enough, and so you needed Amendments to it. That is NOT the same as a “Bill of Rights”. If you wanted a Bill of Rights, the Founders could have made up a Bill of Rights and put it out there.

Now, with that being said, it is my assumption that the reason why the people “Proclaim” a Bill of Rights, even though they do not have one, is that they have a history of it in the English Bill of Rights.

Some of these rights from England were carried over and adopted in the USA, as with “The Right to Bear Arms”. The last time it was included was in 1689, and in fact, it was not a right, but an OBLIGATION for Protestants, to not only be armed but to train with those arms, in order to be always ready for War.

Not being really a right, but an obligation, you would be fined or jailed if you did not comply. So in some ways, they (the Colonists) adopted most of the “Bill of Rights” as it pertained to Arms, but they made sure it was no longer an obligation.

The real issue was “Standing Armies”.

*In larger print*

In this context, until the seventeenth century, British “gun control” laws did not intend to disarm ordinary Britons, even Britons who were not legally free. Rather, weapons controls focused on forcing Britons to supply their own weapons, and sometimes on specifying what kinds of weapons were suitable for persons of various stations in life (p. 10).

Gun controls, in the sense that modern Americans might recognize, were rare and generally ineffectual. It was illegal to shoot a gun in or near a town except in self-defense (p. 10). A statute of Henry VIII prohibited poor people from owning handguns.[29] A 1553 decree of Edward VI ordered “all persons who shoot guns” to register themselves with the local justice of the peace, but a legal guide for Justices of the Peace in the early 1600s asked, “quaere if this now be in use.”[30] In 1569 Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council suggested that the government should centrally store militia arms–a proposal that aroused such intense opposition that the Council immediately withdrew it (p. 10). The government did, however, maintain a monopoly on the production of saltpeter and gunpowder (p. 11), as did many continental governments.

The fact that ordinary Englishmen, rather than a standing army or foreign mercenaries,[31] defended England was a great source of (p.1339)pride to many Englishmen, though they often viewed actual militia duty as a nuisance, and there are numerous court records of prosecutions for failure to perform militia duties or local law enforcement duties (pp. 4-5). When times were peaceful, militia musters were rare or nonexistent.[32]

While restrictions on gun ownership in Britain were generally mild, there were constant efforts to disarm potential subversives. The government allowed Catholics–viewed with suspicion after Henry VIII broke with the Papacy and appointed himself head of the Church of England–to have firearms and other weapons for home defense, but it did not allow them to keep militia arms in their homes (p. 11).

In modern America, many gun control advocates readily affirm the legitimacy of firearms intended for hunting, while arguing that weapons that are mainly useful for antipersonnel purposes–handguns and “assault weapons,” allegedly–should not be in civilian hands.[33] The situation in England was just the opposite. The ruling classes were happy to have a national defense based on a popular civilian militia, rather than on an expensive standing or mercenary army. But the idea of commoners hunting was anathema.[34] Unlike in the United States, private aristocratic estates held most English hunting land, and hunting by commoners was generally illegal.

Still, as Blackstone would later note, the government sometimes enacted game laws for the ostensible preservation of the game, but those laws also served to “prevent[ ] … popular insurrections.”[35](p.1340)A 1389 law, enacted after a lower-class uprising[36] a few years before, set property qualifications for hunting. Henry VIII outlawed conspiracies for the purpose of illegal hunting. Although some of the hunting laws criminalized possession by poor people of devices that had no other purpose but hunting, such as hunting dogs and snares, Henry VIII and Parliament made no attempt to criminalize possession of weapons, such as bows or guns, that individuals could use for personal or civil defense.[37]

Malcolm compresses six hundred years of English weapons policy into her first chapter as she sets the stage for the main topic of her book: the English Civil War and its aftermath. Malcolm’s approach, though still the best single source available, does not fill in all the nuances of the various early English statutes as fully as one might hope. Accordingly, a scholar looking for the full story of the right to arms from the Norman Conquest to the English Civil War will need to start with Malcolm but then move on to the various discussions scattered throughout the legal literature.[38]

The greater weakness of Malcolm’s coverage of this period is the scant attention she gives to the reigns of James I and Charles I in the first three decades of the seventeenth century. As detailed in Lois Schwoerer’s excellent book No Standing Armies,[39] these kings (p.1341)attempted to raise large standing armies, and, often lacking the funds to support the armies, ordered private homes to quarter soldiers at the homeowners’ expense, sometimes for years at a time. Since the lower ranks of the army were generally composed of the “dregs of society,” the quartering of soldiers essentially meant that these Kings forced British homeowners to support and live with violent criminals and drunks who happened to be in the employ of the government.[40]

Schwoerer’s history helps explain why the British of the later seventeenth century shared such an intense fear of standing armies–a fear that was based not merely on political experience but on the personal experience of unfortunate homeowners. This fear then explains in part why the British people felt such great sentiment for a popular militia, not under the monarchy’s control. Although Schwoerer does not delve deeply into American constitutional history, her work makes it easy to see why the Second Amendment, which deals with militias and private arms, was placed adjacent to the Third Amendment, which forbids the quartering of soldiers in the homes: the Founders designed both Amendments in large part as checks on a federal standing army.[41]

So with the forming of the Colonies, they sort of changed this “adopted” right to bear arms. Nothing that you could be jailed for or fined for if you did not comply, and they also extended it to EVERY citizen (Catholics and Jews too) but in doing so, they NEVER made a declaration for it. They never outlined exactly who could be armed and how, as the British did in their “Bill of Rights”. <== Is this what the love affair for the term is all about? They want what they had in England? They wanted to make sure it was not taken away? Their “Bill of Rights”? So they pretend they have it? Even though they don’t?

When the Colonies adopted their form of the 2nd Amendment (previous to the one in place today), many of them explained it fully, as with Virginia:

They obviously were more concerned with “Standing Armies”

And that is where the 2nd Amendment came from. The State Constitutions. Without a Standing Army, not only could the Government not use one to occupy your home, but also the Government would need to appeal to the Militia, in order to conduct War.

Now, to get back to your freedom to assemble, that is gone, or about to be gone. You say “Freedom of Speech”, but is it not an affront to your freedom of speech if you are told you cannot speak against Israel? If this is in your Constitution, and Facebook can stifle your speech on it, then is that not Unconstitutional? If you decide with the “power of your own purse” to support the BDS movement, is that not an attack on your Freedom of Speech if you are punished for doing it? If a vast majority of your media is owned by Zionist entities and promoting Zionist Political Lines, is that not an affront to your Freedom of Speech?

Protests are the only way things change. It was the blocking of the busses which got the laws changed on Blacks having to sit at the back of the bus. It was (certainly in part) the massive protests that ended the Vietnam War. It takes people to take to the streets and protest, should you want change, and in this case, with the Constitution in shreds, I think you are far behind in the need of taking it to the streets.

Yet, with control of Media, and your Government, and your Schools, there is a lot of pure bullshit propaganda being fed into the minds of people, and it does not help, if you run around saying you have a Bill of Rights when you don’t. Or that you have a Right to Bear Arms granted in the 2nd Amendment when the Amendment “declares no such thing”, and that right is a British Adoption in a “morphed way, no longer outlined”. If you do not even know what you are arguing about, and you are that uneducated that you make claims on things that do not exist, then how can any of your arguments be taken seriously?

The UN spelled it out for the World, and that is what you should hold on to, rather than quoting Amendments.

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

16. Marriage and Family. Every grown-up has the right to marry and have a family if they want to. Men and women have the same rights when they are married, and when they are separated.

The Right to Your Own Things. Everyone has the right to own things or share them. Nobody should take our things from us without a good reason.

Freedom of Thought. We all have the right to believe in what we want to believe, to have a religion, or to change it if we want.

Freedom of Expression. We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

The Right to Public Assembly. We all have the right to meet our friends and to work together in peace to defend our rights. Nobody can make us join a group if we don’t want to.

The Right to Democracy. We all have the right to take part in the government of our country. Every grown-up should be allowed to choose their own leaders.

Social Security. We all have the right to affordable housing, medicine, education, and childcare, enough money to live on and medical help if we are ill or old.

Workers’ Rights. Every grown-up has the right to do a job, to a fair wage for their work, and to join a trade union.

The Right to Play. We all have the right to rest from work and to relax.

Food and Shelter for All. We all have the right to a good life. Mothers and children, people who are old, unemployed or disabled, and all people have the right to be cared for.

The Right to Education. Education is a right. Primary school should be free. We should learn about the United Nations and how to get on with others. Our parents can choose what we learn.

Copyright. Copyright is a special law that protects one’s own artistic creations and writings; others cannot make copies without permission. We all have the right to our own way of life and to enjoy the good things that art, science and learning bring.

A Fair and Free World. There must be proper order so we can all enjoy rights and freedoms in our own country and all over the world.

Responsibility. We have a duty to other people, and we should protect their rights and freedoms.